World-Class Absinthe from Ukiah’s Own Germain-Robin Distillery

In the oceanic world of distillers and spirits distributors, 200 gallons is a drip of the faucet. But at the original Germain-Robin distillery, a tiny wooden cottage on the side of a mountain just west of this small city in Mendocino County, 200 gallons is the entire annual output of one of the best absinthes made in the United States.

To adherents of absinthe’s lurid, mythic glamour, the distillery’s Absinthe Superieure must seem disappointingly pure in its mellow complexity and lingering, subtle evocation of herbs and botanicals. It’s yet another triumph for Germain-Robin, whose brandies are recognized as among the best in the world, rivaling top Cognacs and Armagnacs.

But producing distinctive, world-class brandies and spirits does not guarantee financial success in the precarious world of microdistilling. Paradoxically, Germain-Robin owes its survival to the spirit that hip bartenders and cocktail aficionados love to hate: vodka. Making vodka would never have occurred to Ansley Coale back in 1981.

He was a frustrated history professor who owned 2,000 acres in the hills above Ukiah. One day, he picked up a hitchhiker, Hubert Germain-Robin, a young French tourist whose family had made Cognac for nine generations. Mr. Germain-Robin was concerned about the direction of the Cognac industry, which he saw losing its ancient hand-distilling methods as it became more corporate.

Together, they hatched the idea of making brandy using fine wine grapes like pinot noir and sauvignon blanc, rather than the mundane ugni blanc employed in Cognac. Mr. Germain-Robin found an old copper still abandoned in Cognac and shipped it over. Mr. Coale proposed housing it on his land, which he said he had bought in 1973 for $90 an acre.

Along with Clear Creek Distillery in Portland, Ore., and St. George Spirits in the San Francisco Bay Area, Germain-Robin was one of a handful of small distilleries in the 1980s that helped to revolutionize American attitudes toward spirits and cocktails. By focusing on quality and small, artisanal production they offered an alternative vision to the industrial production that dominated the spirits business.

But for Germain-Robin, it was not easy being great. Output was small, and by the late 1990s the spirits distribution system had consolidated and a handful of large companies ruled the game. Their priorities were the big sellers, not handmade niche products like Germain-Robin, no matter how remarkable their quality.

“We were making 1,500 to 2,000 cases, but still, distributors didn’t have time for us,” Mr. Coale said as he drove up the winding dirt road to the distillery, an unopened brandy bottle in the cup holder of his Toyota Camry wagon. “By 2001 we needed a 10,000-case brand to stay in business.”

Back then, flavored vodkas were sweeping the country. Lance Winters, a distiller at St. George, which faced similar distribution difficulties, decided most of them were horrible. He felt that St. George, which had expertise with eaux de vie, could make better flavored vodkas. Before long, St. George had teamed with Germain-Robin in the new vodka venture, which they called Hangar One. In its second year, Hangar One sold 20,000 cases, Mr. Coale said, far beyond expectations, and enough to keep Germain-Robin afloat and make the world safe for 200-gallon batches.

“The whole purpose was a vehicle to carry Germain-Robin, and it’s worked for us and for St. George,” Mr. Coale said.

Business has continued to evolve for Germain-Robin. Mr. Germain-Robin left in 2006. He said he wanted to help other small distilleries, and also cited personal conflicts, though he has remained a shareholder and a consultant. His apprentice, Joe Corley, oversees the distilling, as well as a new apple brandy project. And another former apprentice of Mr. Germain-Robin, Crispin Cain, has returned.

Mr. Cain has been fiddling with absinthe since the early 1990s, and it is his recipe that is now being sold under the Germain-Robin label. He begins by distilling an almost biblical-sounding eau de vie, of apples and honey. After steeping herbs and botanicals in the eau de vie, he gradually adds water, then distills it again.

The exquisite result is an absinthe of unusual purity, with a natural sweetness that requires no added sugar.

Mr. Cain also makes another unusual product, Crispin’s Rose, a gently floral, delicate rose liqueur that is the distilled essence of a huge amount of hand-plucked rose petals — 108 pounds, to be exact — for 300 gallons of liqueur.

What does one do with rose liqueur? Mr. Cain suggests serving it neat with dark chocolate, mixed with Campari or in a Champagne cocktail. Mr. Cain is also overseeing another Germain-Robin project, distilling small batches of whiskey to be served as house brands in brew pubs and specialty bars.

“I think in 10 to 15 years it’ll be an important part of the market,” Mr. Coale said. A decade is nothing, by the way, in distilling time. An old barn behind the cottage distillery houses dozens of barrels of brandy distilled by Mr. Germain-Robin 15 or 20 years ago, still waiting for the proper moment for release. More recent production is housed in a larger facility, with two newer stills, in the nearby Redwood Valley.

In another effort at diversification, Mr. Coale is importing two mezcals from Oaxaca. Mezcalero is sweet and smoky, made from wild agave roasted over mesquite, while Los Danzantes is a more refined, complex spirit.

But brandy is still the heart of Germain-Robin, and it remains brilliant. A 17-year-old XO, distilled mostly from pinot noir, is lovely, complex and subtle, while Old Havana, a 14-year-old brandy made in a more Armagnac style, is lighter and fruitier.

While vodka may be keeping Germain-Robin afloat, Mr. Coale also sees it as a bookmark, as he waits for young cocktail enthusiasts to discover brandy.

“People 21 to 35 are fascinated by spirits,” he said. “People don’t typically start drinking Cognac until their late 30s, so we’ve kind of skipped a generation.”
~~

Feeds: Mendo Island & Independent News

Sea Chantey (Oxford, 1861) There is an insect that people avoid (Whence is derived the verb “to flee”). Where have you been by it most annoyed? In lodgings by the sea. If you like your coffee with sand for dregs, A decided hint of salt in your tea, And a fishy taste in the very […]

Today, a new psychological repression hides in plain sight. It is the servant of a modern ideology, a religion really, that says the material world is soulless and merely fodder for economic growth. This repression prevents most from seeing our ecological predicament and therefore from understanding it or acting in response to it. This repression is of the v […]

Global Coal Boom Ends As China — And World — Wakes Up To Reality Of Carbon Pollution | It's not Climate Change - It's Everything Change | Hillary Clinton has a renewable energy plan, but she still needs one for fossil fuels | Study: We've wiped out half the world's wildlife since 1970 | Against Forgetting...

In an interview during the 40-hour standoff in Portland, Luke Strandquist describes what it’s like on the front line of standing up to Shell Oil.By Katherine Bagley Cloaked in early morning darkness, 13 Greenpeace volunteers climbed over the edge of the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday and rappelled down climbing ropes so they could hover 100 […]

Hundreds of corporate giants have rallied to urge governors to see the upcoming regulations as a boost for the economy.By Katherine Bagley Three hundred sixty-five companies and investors sent letters on Friday to more than two dozen governors supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to significantly reduce carbon emissions from power plan […]

(Houston Chronicle)Shell launched Arctic drilling on Thursday by sending a specialized bit spinning into the bottom of the Chukchi Sea, as critics protested against the campaign. The company now has until Sept. 28 to drill the top portions of up to two wells at its Burger prospect about 70 miles northwest of the Alaska coastline, but after fixing a damaged i […]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is proposing an interstate compact to defy federal law and "shield" states from the EPA's imminent Clean Power Plan.By Naveena Sadasivam With the Obama administration poised to issue its sweeping rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants, a Texas-based conservative think tank is making a far-fetched bid […]

According to this permanently-smiling Christian, the Large Hadron Collider is a horrible idea because God did away with the Tower of Babel.So, you know, logic.The video gets really "interesting" around the 5:05 mark.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who thinks atheists are missing out because we don’t have cool hats like other religious people, says there are some Protestants who believe in a childish version of faith… [According to atheists, religious people] are also supposed to believe in a God who answers prayers here below and gives us goodies if [Read More...]

This is a neat project.Matt Cubberly wrote a book introducing children to evolution via poetry and neat illustrations by May Villani. It's called Evolutionary Tales and they're raising funds for it on Kickstarter:

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

What is not worth doing, is not worth doing well. ~Abraham Maslow

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Zeno Stoics

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~ Cicero